Yesterday, THE IMBECILES released a surreal animated video for One Hand Tommy.
Watch Here: https://youtu.be/A9FZUBN6gw4
Taken from their acclaimed self-titled debut album, One Hand Tommy is its latest single and proves no matter how strange our world seems right now, it could always be stranger…
In a blitz session of blood curdling vocals, disarticulated fretwork and wickelly deranged lyricism, One Hand Tommy sees The Imbeciles tell us the tale of: Tommy; a child trapped in a dystopian landscape of nuclear annihilation with only a giant killer snake for company.
Collaborating with Shane Beam, their regular animation partner, this delectably unhinged meeting-of-minds conjures a two-minute sensory riot, in a video cloaked with enigmatic symbolism and allegory. While some may detect religious overtones to Tommy’s epic battle with the snake/serpent, other viewers may decipher a metaphor alluding to the systemic problems facing the world today (societal, technological, ecological, viral). The Imbeciles invite you to make your own mind up…
The video for One Hand Tommy is also an homage to Le Ballon Rouge, the classic 1956 French short. In that film a bright red balloon is the only pop of colour in an otherwise grey, morose post-war Paris. Here, the colour is found in Tommy’s red onesie. The video’s nightmarish finale is illuminated by the transcendent light of nuclear holocaust – all part of a mise en scène that echoes everything from Picasso’s Guernica through to the great sci-fi movies of the fifties and sixties.
One Hand Tommy is the latest exhilarating track to be released from The Imbeciles self-titled debut album – out now. Comprising of 13 imploded songs which rarely last more than two minutes, the album was recorded on tape in eight deranged days on the Texan-Mexican border.
Later in 2020, The Imbeciles will be returning to the UK for a string of live dates. With no choice but to postpone their planned spring dates in light of the current pandemic, the band’s rescheduled tour will instead take place between 12-20 November. The band will perform at the Royal Park Cellars in Leeds on November 14th.